D&D 5E Characters that annoy you (and/or the players who play them)

[The Crimson Binome]

My pet peeve is dumb characters.

Not just characters with low Intelligence - because Int 5 only means you have a poor memory and are bad at math - but people who talk with a "dumb" accent, and act like they're too dumb to live.

 

[MortalPlague]

The group I'm running through Rise of Tiamat has had one problem player. More of a troll than an actual problem player.

His first character was a cleric. With no healing spells at all. Fair enough, clerics shouldn't be forced to play a healer. But then he began to use stoneshape. He stoneshaped friendly NPCs into their houses. He stoneshaped the party into a dungeon, trapping them. And he wanted to charge for every spell.

Eventually, he got turned to dust.

Enter cleric number two. She resurrected everyone. The NPC knights who the party lost in a skirmish? She revivified all of them. Then she broke out some more diamonds and began to raise anyone who fell in battle with them. It was kind of absurd, but pretty funny to watch.

She got disintegrated by a lich.

His latest character is a stealth-monster of a rogue, who assassinates everybody at the drop of a hat. Including friendly NPCs. So far, he's still alive.

 

[PnPgamer]

My pet peeve is dumb characters.

Not just characters with low Intelligence - because Int 5 only means you have a poor memory and are bad at math - but people who talk with a "dumb" accent, and act like they're too dumb to live.

Can you give an example? Because i bet there are "bad idiots" and "good idiot" characters. Are you talking about the ones that interpret low int being a worst case down syndrome?
Ie. "Ahyuk hyuk bbbrrrllrlrlrrlrbbbrrrlrlrl"
Id think good idiot is more like "grognar rip you shreds, if you not stops"

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Can you give an example? Because i bet there are "bad idiots" and "good idiot" characters.

Actually, Grognar is exactly my peeve - characters who are too dumb to speak properly.

Some people like to treat 3-18 as the entire possible range of human ability, rather than treating that as the normal range for healthy adults (and treating infirm/feeble characters as outliers which aren't covered by the system since they're significantly less common than 1-in-216). Some people talk like Gump if the character has a score lower than eight :-/

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This isn't unique to me, but I'll have a go:

I dislike playing with munchkins who grab everything that isn't nailed down. For example, stealing blankets from the houses of friendly NPCs.

I dislike playing with PCs who keep secrets from the party. E.g. a munchkin who stole silver daggers from the friendly NPCs quietly kept mum about those silver daggers when we were facing wererats. All the players knew he had those daggers of course, and so in character we were like, "Does anyone have any silver weapons? No? Okay, I guess we'll have to do something else then..." He probably had some kind of in-character motivation but that didn't make it any less contemptible, that just makes him contemptible on purpose--either way I don't want that guy in the party.

As a player, I also dislike playing with PCs or players who make dreadfully bad tactical decisions. I don't mean character-building decisions like making a wizard with Str 16 and Int 12--that's weird, but it's part of the metagame so it can't be stupid. But a multiclassed Wizard 9/Cleric 9 who consistently blows his 9th level spell slots casting Chromatic Orb and Mass Healing Word drives me nuts.

 

[Will Doyle]

I'm weary of loner characters. Backstories that have families wiped out, and personality traits that make the character standoffish or gloomily withdrawn. It's like the player's actively trying to sever any opportunity to connect with the world, and teasing out their personality in-game often ends up feeling like a therapy session.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't like when people play Drow. You're either evil and annoying or you're a Drizzt clone.

I hate it when people overgeneralize about Drow- I played 3 different Drow PCs years before Drizzle even got published, and none were evil.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My pet peeve is dumb characters.

Not just characters with low Intelligence - because Int 5 only means you have a poor memory and are bad at math - but people who talk with a "dumb" accent, and act like they're too dumb to live.

It all depends...

In 1Ed, I played a dumb human Fighter named Bear- maxed out physical stats and 6s in all the mental stats (by DM's permission). He was a big, dumb, but gentle giant who had the misfortune of being hired as a bodyguard by the party's unscrupulous thief. Bear thought they were best buddies, but the thief was just using him.

(Yes, I used a "dumb" accent lifted from a Bugs Bunny cartoon- the one with the gangsters.)

Bear died holding a bridge against the city watch while the party escaped- they were being chased because the thief stole something.

The thief died at the hands of the party, with the reward money being used to open an orphanage.

Good times!

 

[Lanefan]

Me, I don't like when a majority of the party isn't heroic. There are very few fantasy books or movies where the heroes aren't Good (The "Elric" books come to mind though).

Me, I don't care about this as long as people are having fun.

I hate cheaters.

I don't like the selfish player who always talks over other people.

I'm with you on these two, though am sometimes myself guilty of being the second.

Anyway, what about you guys? What don't you like?

Paladins. A party with a Paladin in it may well be heroic, but it's likely going to provide more arguments than laughter at the table.

Characters and-or players who won't take risks but are quite happy when others do. This annoys me to no end, as I'm often the one taking risks - and thus rolling up new characters while the cowards scoop the loot and xp.

Lan-"what use are all this armour and all these hit points if I don't put them to the test now and then"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

Some people like to treat 3-18 as the entire possible range of human ability

Er...because 3-18 *is* supposed to be the range of human ability; with anything less than 3 essentially non-functional and anything over 18 essentially godlike.*

For intelligence in particular, a handy way to look at it is that a character's IQ is roughly its Int. score x 10...thus a character with Int. 6 has an IQ of about 60, which is defined as mentally deficient in most situations; which in turn means there's nothing wrong with playing it as such.

* - Wisdom and Charisma are the two that can wander outside these ranges without too many headaches.

Lanefan